After her husband died suddenly, Sheryl Sandberg grieved, as anyone would. What she did next was a little more unusual, and very much in the Silicon Valley spirit of problem-solving. As she grasped for answers, Facebook’s chief operating officer reached out to a business school professor.
Adam Grant, a Wharton School expert on organizational psychology, is a friend of Sandberg’s, but also someone she knew would have insight into her situation grounded in data. And in her moment of grief, Sandberg needed grounding.
“I was so worried my kids’ happiness would be destroyed in the moment we lost Dave,” Sandberg says of her husband, Dave Goldberg, who at the time of his death worked as the CEO of SurveyMonkey. “I asked Adam, ‘What do I do? Tell me. What. To. Do.’”
Grant told Sandberg about a longitudinal study of children who had lost a parent but nevertheless had happy childhoods and became well-adjusted adults. “The research was so helpful because something else that happens with death is this sense of complete loss of control,” Sandberg says. “I have no control over Dave’s death—it happened so suddenly. And even when death doesn’t happen so suddenly, you can’t stop it.”
In helping Sandberg find answers, Grant wound up becoming the co-author of her new book, Option B, about facing adversity and building resilience. It’s equal parts memoir, scientific explainer, and inspirational anecdotes of others who have struggled in difficult situations.
Source: Sheryl Sandberg: Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy